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Naming People

Desi names being mispronounced is what we have come to expect as the norm in America - the fact of having a Vice President who has a "challenging" first name is not going to change that. When someone gets it right, we think the person is well-traveled, well-read and cultured. In the workplace, the collective jaws of my brethren can fall to the floor if Parineeta is pronounced correctly for instance. We certainly don't expect it. It's not a matter of if that name will be butchered, we are interested in the creativity that goes into the act of butchering. Some of the variants are more impressive that others - it shows the person made quite an effort to get it as wrong as they could. 

A woman I worked with has a rather simple desi name but there was this one dude who took issue with her being assertive and willing to call bullshit when she saw it. He mispronounced her name like an act of revenge every chance he got. S was gracious to ignore the stupidity and get on with her life. I remember feeling aggravated each time he did it - but she was too cool to care. It was plainly evident she thought too little of the guy to get bothered by how he pronounced her name. 

A few years later at another place I worked,  a desi woman was referred to by her last name habitually because these folks could not tell her first and last name apart though they had absolutely nothing in common. K was a young person, a few years out of grad school, so I felt the urge to rescue her but when I thought of how S behaved when faced with something similar, I decided to hold back. K was a sharp as a tack and did not suffer idiots anymore than S did. Maybe there was a common theme here. 

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